Kichi – Life of a Meiji-Woman who immigrated to Texas

    “Recently, I have been remembering my youth, and imagining my children living here, in America, as Americans, without knowing anything of my past, makes me cry.” – Kichi Kagawa (1896 - 1995)

Childhood in Japan

    When I was young, children didn't have to go to school. My family was one of the richest in the village; my father was involved in mortgages, making umbrellas, and selling oil. My grandfather owned a wholesale snack factory. My mother told me that whenever they had festivals in town, she would put a lot of snacks into her kimono sleeves and share the snacks with her friends. The town beautician would fix my mother's hair in the latest styles for the festivals, and the other girls were always envious.

    My mother also wove kimonos. She spun thread from the cotton in her fields, and made silk from the silkworms she kept. From these things she made kimono cloth. She kept her silkworms in a small box and fed them mulberry leaves. When they pupated, she boiled them in a big steel pan and stirred them with a bamboo stick. The pupae produced silk as they were stirred, and the silk clung to the edge of the pan. She scraped the pan to collect the silk.

    When fragment olives were in bloom in our yard, the village smelled wonderful. We had grapes, persimmons, pears, and kumquats, bitter oranges and big cherry trees in the yard. The cherry blossoms were white. They were beautiful.

    We also had plum trees in our yard, which my mom picked to make umeboshi (pickled Japanese apricot) every year. When I was little, we had a servant living in our house whose name was Ushi. He would give me a ride on his horse, and take me cotton picking and radish digging.

    He would set up an unagi-trap in a river in the evening, and return the next morning to collect any unagi (eel). My mother made kabai-yaki from the catch. We sometimes put the unagi on steaming rice with seaweed, poured tea over everything, and ate. This was my father's favorite dish.

    During the war with Russia, I was in school, and everyday, I saw young men going to war, and funerals of those who died. My father started to grow sick when Japan won with Russia.

    I remember giving out oranges to people who were in the victory parade, and when I was nine, a month after my youngest sister was born, my father passed away. His funeral was different from those of other people, for he devoted himself to the village. I still remember vividly a monk, dressed in purple robes and carrying a parasol, chanting at my father's funeral. My father was an important figure in town.

    The soil of the farm had grown old, and unsuitable for rice farming. At first, we tried to grow cotton and corn, but neither crop succeeded, and we decided to close the farm and return to Japan. Right after we decided to go back, Onishi gave us a piece of land in Webster to express his gratitude, and asked us to grow rice on that land. We decided to stay in America. I wanted to go home, and canceling our return made me sad.

    We moved to Webster, I saw long-waisted dragonflies and lightning bugs, neither of which I had seen since arriving in America. At night, I was surprised to see so many lightening bugs flying around. Also, so many butterflies filled the air in Webster that the sky sometimes looked yellow. After we sprayed the farm, we stopped seeing the butterflies. Sometimes, there were so many mosquitoes outside that the air looked black, and we stayed inside. When we first came to Webster, we had Sundays off, so we went to the coast to catch crabs. Eventually, we started working on Sunday.

   Nihonginkai (an organization for Japanese immigrants in America) was formed and we met once a year in Galveston for a picnic. In Houston, a group of Japanese started a club where we could see Japanese singers, and there I saw the famous Japanese singer, Yoshie Fujiwara. I also saw Japanese movies whenever I could.

    Since coming to America, I have read so much. When Onishi returned to Japan, he sent us many books more popular with men than women. In order to distract myself from my loneliness, I read those books at night, by lamplight. Because I read so much Japanese, I never learned English very well.

    Mexican people who worked with us ate a lot of beans cooked with a little oil and lard. They hardly ate meat, but they worked very hard. Caucasians people also liked the beans, and asked us for them occasionally. The Mexicans sometimes had wild parties; a small band would play Mexican dancing music, and kegs of beer were tapped. Sometimes, the parties grew violent, and some people shot one another dead.

    Many Japanese tried to immigrate illegally to the United States. If they were found out, the Immigration Officials would come and send them back to Japan. Japanese families in Webster hired some of these illegals. Amongst them were three young men, all in their early twenties. One morning, they started a fight, and one of them was stabbed with a knife. Around four in the morning, a man in a blood-drenched T-shirt rushed into my house, soon followed by the man who had stabbed him. I had no idea what to do; called the doctor to look at the man's wounds. His hand and stomach were both badly wounded, and the doctor treated both injuries. Later, the doctor told us that if the man hadn't covered his stomach with his hand when he was stabbed, the knife wound would've been fatal. Had the police found out about the incident, all three men would have been deported; fortunately, the doctor was a friend of ours, and agreed to say nothing. Fifty years after that night, I received a letter from the man who had been stabbed. Inside was a letter expressing his gratitude and five hundred dollars.

    I'm just sitting here by the window, looking at cherry blossoms in the sun. Because of last year's drought, I thought the cherry tree had died, but it didn't. We also have persimmon trees and peach trees here. Both grew from seeds we threw away in the yard. They used to be tall as I am now, but now they're huge, and they bear a lot of fruit. Looking at the persimmon tree reminds me of leaving Japan. I can't forget the delicious taste of those persimmons and figs.

    I often see mockingbirds pecking at peaches. Peaches here aren't nearly as good as the ones I ate back home as a little girl. It's common for Caucasians to eat peaches in the morning with sugar and cream. We also have cherries here; some taste good, others don't.

    From middle of September to the middle of November, many people suffer from something called hay fever. If you have this problem, your nose runs, and your eyes itch and turn red. I've dealt with hay fever for thirty years.

     There are only a few isseis who were able to go back to Japan. The only people who have survived are Kobayashi, who is 101 years old (she lives in the neighborhood) and myself. There are hardly any old-timers like us left in Webster. Kobayashi is too old to walk, so when her older daughters come to care for her, I sometimes visit and try to talk with her. She's usually too weak to talk with me.

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